Chapter 6 The Matches Multiply
THE MATCHES MULTIPLY
WHERE THE UNIVERSE THROWS EVERYTHING AT ME AND I FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHY.
Iwoke up to the sound of arguing.
Not the muffled, distant arguing of neighbors through thin walls. The loud, immediate arguing of people in my actual living room, having what sounded like a passionate debate about… boy bands?
“See, it’s not just about the harmonies,” a male voice was saying. “It’s about the emotional authenticity. When Nick sings ‘I Want It That Way,’ you can FEEL his longing.”
“The song doesn’t make any sense,” another male voice countered. “The lyrics are literally meaningless. ‘Tell me why, ain’t nothing but a heartache’? What does that MEAN?”
“It means EVERYTHING.”
“It means the songwriter was on a deadline.”
I sat up in bed. Tequila was staring at me from the pillow next to mine, his expression somewhere between alarm and resignation.
There are men in the living room, he informed me. Multiple men. They let themselves in.
“How did they let themselves in? The door was locked.”
They say the universe told them you needed them. The one with the frosted tips is particularly insistent about this.
I grabbed my phone. 5,847 matches. When I’d fallen asleep—after hours of staring at Marcus’s unanswered message thread—it had been at 4,900-something. The magic had been busy overnight.
I pulled on a robe and walked into my living room.
Three men were making themselves at home in my apartment.
Ryan—Ryan from 1999, the guy I’d gone on exactly one date with before deciding his Backstreet Boys obsession was a dealbreaker—was standing in my kitchen making coffee like he owned the place.
He still had the frosted tips. He was still wearing the same cargo pants and tribal necklace he’d worn on our disastrous date to TGI Friday’s.
Derek—not Cassie’s Derek, MY Derek, from a brief fling in 2003 that ended when I discovered he had strong opinions about the Oxford comma and absolutely nothing else—was sitting on my couch, examining my bookshelf with visible disapproval. He had a red pen in his hand. I didn’t want to know why.
And Greg. Of course Greg. Still in his leisure suit, still radiating disco energy, currently sitting in my armchair eating cereal he’d apparently found in my cabinet.
“WHAT IS HAPPENING.”
They all turned to look at me.
“DIANE!” Ryan’s face lit up like I was a long-lost friend instead of a woman who’d blocked his number in 1999. “The universe brought me to you! We have unfinished business!”
“Our business was VERY finished. I finished it when you tried to serenade me with ‘Quit Playing Games With My Heart’ in a TGI Friday’s.”
“That was ROMANTIC.”
“The waitstaff applauded sarcastically, Ryan.”
“They were moved!”
“They were embarrassed for both of us!”
“The grammar in your apartment is appalling,” Derek announced, holding up one of my books. “Split infinitives everywhere. Did no one teach you about parallel structure?”
“Did no one teach YOU about breaking and entering?”
“The door was open.” He made a note in red pen. In MY book. “Cosmically speaking.”
“The door was LOCKED. Physically speaking.”
“Far out,” Greg said through a mouthful of Lucky Charms. “You’re even groovier when you’re angry.”
I pressed my palms against my eyes and counted to ten. Then twenty. Then gave up because counting wasn’t going to fix this.
My phone buzzed. A new notification: Your romantic destiny awaits! Three matches are nearby!
“THEY’RE ALREADY HERE,” I told the phone. “I KNOW THEY’RE NEARBY. THEY’RE IN MY LIVING ROOM.”
The phone buzzed again. Four matches are nearby!
“I’M GOING TO THROW YOU IN THE RIVER.”
A knock at the door.
“Don’t,” I said to the room at large. “Nobody answer that. We’re at capacity. We have reached maximum occupancy for confused men from my romantic history.”
Another knock. More insistent.
“Maybe it’s pizza,” Greg offered hopefully. “I could groove on some pizza.”
“It’s not pizza. It’s never pizza.”
The knock became a pounding.
And then a voice I recognized—calm, steady, no-nonsense: “Diane? It’s Margaret. Let me in before your neighbors call the HOA.”
I practically sprinted to the door.
Margaret stood in the hallway holding a large carpet bag that looked like it belonged to Mary Poppins and smelled like sage and something earthier. She took one look past me into my apartment, surveyed the assembled chaos, and sighed.
“Worse than I thought.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You have a man in a leisure suit eating Lucky Charms in your armchair and two others arguing about whether ‘Bye Bye Bye’ was cultural appropriation of breakup terminology. Yes, it’s obvious.
” She pushed past me into the apartment.
“Everyone who doesn’t live here, go sit in the corner and be quiet. I need to work.”
To my amazement, they listened. Even Greg, who shuffled to the corner with his cereal bowl, looking chastened.
“How did you do that?”
“Sixty years of practice and a complete lack of patience for nonsense.” Margaret set her bag on my coffee table and began pulling out items—candles, salt, something that looked like dried herbs tied with red thread. “Cassie called. Said you had an escalation.”
“An escalation. Yes. That’s one word for it.
” I gestured at the corner where my past romantic mistakes were clustered like sad, confused houseplants.
“I woke up this morning with TWO uninvited ex-boyfriends. Plus Greg, who isn’t technically an ex because we never dated—the app just decided we had potential in 1978. ”
“Far out,” Greg added helpfully from the corner.
“It’s getting worse,” Margaret said, not a question. “Because you’re getting closer.”
“Closer to WHAT?”
“To actually wanting something.” She lit one of the candles, began walking a slow circle around my living room. “Your magic senses it. It’s escalating.”
“The magic is ESCALATING?”
“The gift responds to the witch.” She paused to sprinkle salt across my doorway. “You spent a week in that antique shop. You almost kissed someone. You started closing doors—or at least, you started thinking about closing doors. The magic felt it.”
“And it didn’t like that?”
“It panicked.” She completed her circle, muttered something in a language I didn’t recognize.
The air in the apartment shifted—felt cleaner somehow, like after a thunderstorm.
“Every ex, every possibility, every what-if you ever entertained—it’s pulling them all in.
Trying to overwhelm you. Trying to keep you in that comfortable space of endless options. ”
I looked at Ryan, who was quietly humming “As Long As You Love Me” in the corner. At Derek, who was making notes on a napkin, probably cataloging my grammatical sins. At Greg, who had finished his cereal and was now attempting to meditate.
“How do I make it stop?”
“You know how.”
“I really don’t.”
“You choose.” Margaret packed up her supplies with efficient movements. “Close a door. Commit to something. Show your magic that narrowing down doesn’t mean disaster.”
“And if I choose wrong?”
“Then you’ll survive it.” She shouldered her bag. “The new wards will hold for a few days—no new arrivals. But the ones already here won’t leave until you start making decisions.”
She left. The door clicked shut behind her.
I stood in my warded apartment, surrounded by men from my past, and wondered if I was ever going to figure out how to do this.
Todd showed up three hours later.
Not a magic-summoned echo of Todd. Not a younger version pulled from some romantic timeline. The actual, present-day, fifty-one-year-old Todd, standing outside my door looking older and tireder than I’d ever seen him.
“How did you get past the wards?” I asked.
“The what?”
Right. He wasn’t magic. He was just… here. Because he’d driven here, like a normal person, probably using GPS and everything.
“Never mind.” I stood in my doorway, not inviting him in. Behind me, I could hear the muffled sounds of Ryan explaining to Greg why NSYNC was actually inferior to the Backstreet Boys. “What do you want, Todd?”
“I told you in my message. I want to talk.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“I think we do.” He looked past me into the apartment, caught a glimpse of the chaos inside, and blinked. “Are you… having a party?”
“No. It’s a long story. What do you want?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair—greyer now, thinner, and standing up like he’d been doing that a lot.
“I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t concentrate.
Couldn’t stop thinking about you. It’s been weeks now—this pull, like something was dragging me here.
I finally just got in the car and drove. ”
He looked as confused by this as I was. The confident man who’d told me I “wasn’t the woman he married anymore” was gone. In his place was someone haggard, uncertain, like he’d been fighting something he didn’t understand.
“The magic,” I said quietly. “My magic. It’s been pulling in every romantic possibility from my past.”
“Your what?”
“It’s a long story.” I stood in my doorway, not inviting him in. Behind me, I could hear the muffled sounds of Ryan explaining to Greg why NSYNC was actually inferior to the Backstreet Boys. “Why are you really here, Todd?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then: “I thought maybe we could try again.”
There it was. The real reason.
“No.”
“Di—”
“No.” The word came out clean. Certain. Not angry, not bitter—just clear. “We’re done, Todd. We’ve been done for five years.”
“I know I wasn’t good to you. I’ve been in therapy. I’ve changed—”
“I’m glad you’ve changed. I mean that. But I don’t want to try again.
” I met his eyes. “I don’t love you. I’m not sure I ever really did.
I picked you because you felt safe, and then I spent five years making myself smaller to fit what you wanted, and it still wasn’t enough. That’s not love. That’s just fear.”
He flinched. But he didn’t argue.
“Is there someone else?”
I thought about Marcus. His grumpiness. His grief. The way he made me tea without asking. The way he’d looked when Greg interrupted our almost kiss.
“There’s someone I’m trying not to lose.”
Todd nodded slowly. Something shifted in his face—the desperate, magic-driven need fading, replaced by something quieter. Resignation, maybe. Or release.
“Then don’t let him get away.” He stepped back from the door. “For what it’s worth—I’m sorry. For all of it.”
“I know.”
He turned and walked away. And as he did, I felt something shift in the air—a door closing, not just physically but somewhere deeper. Like the magic had needed this. Needed me to say no to his face, to close this possibility once and for all.
My phone buzzed. I glanced at it.
The match count had dropped. 5,847 to 5,846.
One down. Thousands to go.
But it was a start.
Cassie found me an hour later, sitting on my kitchen floor while the three time-displaced men watched a documentary about disco that Greg had somehow found on my TV.
“Rough day?” She sat down next to me, back against the refrigerator.
“Todd was here. The real one.”
“Oh.” She processed that. “What did he want?”
“To try again.” I pulled my knees up to my chest. “He drove three states. Said he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about me. The magic was pulling him.”
“What did you say?”
“No.” I stared at my hands. “I told him I didn’t love him. That I picked him because he felt safe, not because he was right. And when I said it—when I really meant it—something shifted. The match count dropped by one.”
“The magic needed you to close that door in person.”
“I think so.” I exhaled. “He asked if there was someone else. I told him there was someone I was trying not to lose.”
“Marcus?”
“Marcus.” The name came out soft. “Todd told me to stop running and go get him. Which is ironic life advice from my ex-husband, but he’s not wrong.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” My voice cracked. “He pulled away, Cass. After we almost kissed—after Greg showed up and ruined everything—he just shut down. Said ‘goodnight’ like he meant goodbye forever.”
“Do you think he did? Mean it?”
I thought about the way he’d looked at me right before the phone screamed. The way his hand had felt on my cheek. The way the radio had gone silent when he closed himself off.
“I think he’s scared,” I said slowly. “He lost his wife two years ago. He told me he’d never let anyone in again. And then I show up with my chaos and my possessed phone and almost kiss him, and then immediately get interrupted by a disco enthusiast with a mix tape.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. He’s pulling away. And I don’t know how to make him believe I’m not going to hurt him.”
“Do you want to? Make him believe?”
“Yes.” The word came out certain. Surprising myself. “I want him, Cass. Not because he makes the phone stop buzzing. Not because he’s safe. Because when I’m with him, I don’t want to run.”
“Then tell him that.”
“What if he says no?”
“Then at least you’ll know you tried.” She squeezed my hand.
“But I don’t think he’ll say no. I think he’s just as scared as you are.
He lost his wife. He’s been hiding in that shop for two years.
And then you showed up and made him feel something, and that’s terrifying for someone who thought they were done feeling. ”
From the living room, I heard Greg say, “This disco documentary is FAR OUT. Did you know the Bee Gees were actually brothers?”
“Yes,” Ryan said flatly. “Everyone knows that.”
“Wild, man. Wild.”
I looked at Cassie. She looked at me.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll go to the shop tomorrow. I’ll tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“That I want to try. That the interruption wasn’t me running. That I’m terrified, but I’d rather be terrified with him than safe without him.”
Cassie smiled. “That’s a start.”
It was. It was more than I’d been able to say in years.
I just hoped it would be enough.